Im building a new PC that I will have in my bedroom and will be on all the time so I want it to be completely quiet. The good news is I am building the entire thing from scratch so am not trying to reuse any old parts. I want to use the new Haswell CPU probably i7. I am looking for suggestions for making this thing absolutely silent. I am pretty new to building PCs. The parts that make noise will be anything with moving parts so I guess it would be case, cpu cooler, psu, graphics card, hard drive...is there anything else? Looking for 3TB of storage. Im not heavy into gaming so might stick with the built in graphics card for now but would still appreciate any suggestions for future reference. Thanks!

Welcome to SPCR. Wait a couple of months if you want to do a Haswell build to let the BIOS revisions and firmware updates settle down...unless you like dealing with this kind of stuff. In order to help you with a well rounded build - what are your applications?

I second Steve suggestion, wait some time for bios revisions to come out, and not deal with the release issues, probably wait for the C2 chipset revisions that should be out around august, thats my plan atm, but i get craving to just buy now, but trying to resist.

I would buy all the other stuff though, practically all but the motherboard, maybe memory if you want to go by motherboard aproved memory list, but the rest you can pratically buy it now and just wait for the mobo.

Would be best if you can detail what exactly you plan to use the PC for. Like what programs will you be using, for example even if you are not into gaming heavy... what games do you play, if this is also going to be used for pure emial/surfing or more into editing videos/audio. etc. Also what your budget, how much you willing to invest in your pc.

Some gaming maybe the latest MMO. I will also be doing some guitar recording. Other than that heavy streaming, watching movies, web browsing.

(Abula: you were caught by the moderated post monster )

Based on this, you don't need to spend the $'s on an i7. An i5 is plenty. Gaming sets the bar on how much CPU you need, guitar recording sets the bar for how quiet you need it to be, and the differences between the two will determine your tradeoffs. Basically, you can only put so big of a graphics card in there before it will be the loudest component.

So, here's some thoughts:

PSU: go passive. An i5 system will use maybe 130W under stressed load. Actual load, maybe 100W. The biggest passive video card you could put in there is maybe 100W. So, 230W total. A Seasonic x-400 is a good fit.

Case: do you have any size constraints? Do you care whether it's a tower or mid tower or smaller? At the mid tower size, some favorites are the Fractal R4 and Antec Solo II.

Thanks for the suggestions! I don't really have a preference for case size, probably not an enormous tower. Just one that is quiet. For my recording I am not sure what I'm going to use. I still have to research what my options are. Would certain options involve alot of power consumption where I should consider a bigger PSU?

For my recording I am not sure what I'm going to use. I still have to research what my options are.

If you want to dive deep into the technical aspects of digital recording, visit gearslutz. A lot of folks with DAW builds that wander into SPCR tend to use external mixers that digitize the tracks and interface with the PC via FireWire. So, before you settle on a motherboard, figure out your mixer board first

ubquiet wrote:

Would certain options involve alot of power consumption where I should consider a bigger PSU?

- Every new platform released since there was ever a PC is buggy. Every single one. It could be a hardware flaw, it could be a software/firmware flaw.

- There's a bug in the Intel chipset's USB3 controller. The bug prevents some attached devices from being recognized when the PC returns from a sleep state. Hardware Info found something like 17 of 22 USB thumb drives were susceptable when they tested it. If you buy a mobo today, the fix is to remount the device when it disappears. The long term fix is a revised southbridge chip which won't be released to mobo mfgrs until mid July. So, it's a guessing game when the older mobo stock is finally purged from retailers. Maybe September. If unplugging/replugging in a USB device doesn't bother you, then it's not a big deal.

- In the first few months, there's a spate of mobo BIOS/driver revisions. These slow down after 2-3 months. If you don't mind updating BIOS and drivers, then this isn't a big issue.

If you are still set on building this summer, then wait a month. There will be tons on motherboard reviews and it'll help making an informed decision (rather than basing it on people saying "this board looks nice").

The fanless PSUs are pricey compared to the fanned counterparts. Do you think I can get away with a fanned PSU and still have a silent system? Do all PSUs with fans only turn on when it gets too hot or just certain models?

The fanless PSUs are pricey compared to the fanned counterparts. Do you think I can get away with a fanned PSU and still have a silent system? Do all PSUs with fans only turn on when it gets too hot or just certain models?

- Yes, no magic involved, just pick your parts carefully

-Yes and no. All PSU do ramp up when they have to deliver more output. Some modells don't spin the fan up under 200W, some do different. How fast and how high the fan ramps up is up to manufacturers -> Different modell, different fan behaviour

The fanless PSUs are pricey compared to the fanned counterparts. Do you think I can get away with a fanned PSU and still have a silent system?

If you find the fanless too expensive, maybe look into hybrid PSU, that will be passive under light load (fan wont start) and once you load the pc and temp starts to go up it will start the fan, this is what i would recommend if your budget allowed it.

If still find it too expensive, your looking for something cheaper, check Seasonic G series, the fans will start from the power on, but under idle they are very quiet, they will ramp up depending on the condition.

Take some of the extra $100 you would have put into getting an i7 toward the PSU. It's the second longest life item in your build (next to the case). With your recording requirement, I'd steer toward either the hybrid fan types or a passive.

Complete silence will be hard if you want something in the Haswell class.

I was a little disappointed yesterday when I was installing my operating system in a ~quiet room. The noise from two low rpm case fans, a low rpm heat sink fan, Asus Direct CU cooler and PSU was clearly audible from 6'+ away.

A little later in a not so quiet room I noticed that an HP tower PC is noticeably louder, even over the increased background noise so I'm becoming less disappointed.

I will fool around with fan control and trying to "silence" my cheapo case but my 80mm fanned PSU was certainly not the loudest part.

If you go with a PSU that has a low rpm 120mm fan, it can potentially be quieter than mine but you still have to fix everything else and a HDD (mine is SSD only).

Depending on how quiet your room is and how much noise you can tolerate, you probably want to invest in a "silent" case and pay special attention to your HDD because it will probably be the noisiest part (not counting optical drives).

How do I figure out how many watts I need? I read that its best to run your system at 50-60% of the PSUs capability for best efficiency. I want to leave enough room in case I get into gaming and want to get a badass graphics card in the future.

I'm going to do some load testing and benchmarking with my not so badass video card and expect to see about 200 watt maximum draw at the wall, assuming 90% PSU efficiency that means around 180 watts out of the PSU.

You can estimate your full load total by adding up your TDP numbers.

For me its 77 watt CPU, 85 watt GPU, ~1 watt SSD maybe 4 watts for my low voltage ram, a few more watts for fans and call it 10 watts for my motherboard. That's about 180 total but in normal use you will never see everything at 100% load.

For you, your choice depends on how badass of a GPU you want to get. Most low wattage PSUs lack the connectors required for real high end stuff like a Titan so you might have to get a 650 watt PSU to ensure that it will plug and play with anything.

If your card is more modest, the PSUs in the 450 watt range should be plenty.

I went for efficiency and since I estimate a real gaming load will be more like 120-140 watts on my machine, a 255 watt PSU should be fine but getting a 255 watt PSU with a PCIe 12v connector meant some soldering and wire splicing (but it was cheap).

How do I figure out how many watts I need? I read that its best to run your system at 50-60% of the PSUs capability for best efficiency. I want to leave enough room in case I get into gaming and want to get a badass graphics card in the future.

From my first post:

Quote:

PSU: go passive. An i5 system will use maybe 130W under stressed load. Actual load, maybe 100W. The biggest passive video card you could put in there is maybe 100W. So, 230W total. A Seasonic x-400 is a good fit.

If you opt to go bigger than the 7850, here's a not quite so up to date list of gfx card TDPs. If you game at 1080p, there's no reason to get a card that uses more than 150-175W. So, worst case, that brings you up to 300W stressed load. Actual gaming load is more likely to be around 250W.

So, you could still go with a passive 400W PSU...taking into account whether or not it has the extra 6/8 pin power connectors you need for the video card you select.

The 50-60% efficiency thing: sort of true but for the wrong reasons. A lot of fanned PSUs have aggressive fan rpm profiles once you get to/past 50% load. So, if you never want to hear the fan, you might opt to get a PSU rated much higher than your actual load...like 2x. Sort of depends on the specific PSU and the dBA rating at your load.

The other side of the equation is don't completely overspecify the PSU, because it's efficiency when your PC idles will be poor.

The 80+ test on my PSU showed 89% efficiency at 100% rated load which means it never makes more than about 28 watts of waste heat.

A PSU that has a higher power rating and lower efficiency can generate a lot more waste heat which means more aggressive air flow is required.

Luckily PSU transistors are pretty durable and at 100% load they are running hot and not that far from their failure point but since the delta t is so high it doesn't take much air to keep them from blowing and that's fine unless you constantly run at 100% load.

Running at 50% with 91% efficiency, my PSU will generate about 12 watts of waste heat which is easy to handle.

Where it gets tricky is when you get a 650 watt PSU to have capacity for a beastly GPU and use it to power a PC that idles at 45 watts. At 7% load your efficiency might be less than 70%, even if its 80+ rated because 80+ is only tested at 20%, 50% and 100% load and suddenly you're making more waste heat at idle than mine does at load.

At 20% my PSU is 90% efficient so at 45 watt idle, I know its going to be close to 90%, 5 watts waste heat, nice and cool.

Appropriate wattage and 80+ gold certification are about as good as it gets. There are platinum and titanium rated PSUs but not with wattage appropriate to a low power PC as far as I've seen.

1156, 1155 and 1150 all use the same motherboard hole pattern so compatibility is fairly certain, the biggest thing to worry about is a motherboard with some component that interferes with the mounting bracket. You can probably find photos that show the areas in question but most new motherboards are designed with a big keep out area to ensure compatibility.

I'm using a socket 775 heat sink with a socket 1156 adapter bracket on a socket 1155 motherboard so if I can do that, using an 1155 heat sink on an 1150 is child's play.

Thanks for the info. I still haven't grabbed a PSU. I'm trying to find a good deal. I saw the Silencer MKIII 500W on newegg for $48. Do you think I'm safe with 500W for any kind of video card as long as it's only 1 video card. I just want to leave my options open in case I get back into gaming.

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